Amazon Phone

Amazon Has Just Announced The "Amazon Fire" Phone, And It's Pretty Incredible

Amazon unveiled its new phone today, the Amazon Fire. There were high expectations, especially because of this video where the phone is hidden and users are just marveling at its capabilities (most likely the 3D imaging interface).

With mobile commerce steadily growing at a pace that suggests it may overtake desktop commerce, an Amazon Phone that interfaces with all the capabilities of shopping on Amazon (Amazon Dash, Amazon Prime, Amazon Prime Air, #AmazonCart) makes sense for Amazon.

They had to bring a lot to the table to compete in a smartphone market almost exclusively dominated by Apple and Samsung, and they did, but will it be enough?

It is $199 on a two-year contract and is exclusive to AT&T. It starts at $650 outside contract. It is available for pre-order today and ships on July 25th. Twelve months of Amazon Prime are included with the phone.

Yes, there is a 3D imaging interface. The screen moves with you and "redraws the image" as you move the phone. So you can turn the phone to see more of the image as if it were really in your hand. You can tilt the screen to slide through galleries or increase/decrease the size of a photo. It works for games too! It's an interesting alternative to Apple's swipe method, but it sounds a bit volatile.

The camera is a 13MP rear camera with f/2.0 lens and there is unlimited photo storage. There are four front-facing cameras. And they each have an infrared light for night-use. These cameras are how the screen tilts with you, by the way. They're tracking your head at all times — like a sniper. A benevolent, robot sniper that is a phone.

The exterior is Gorilla Glass 3 (both back and front) with a rubber frame, and the buttons are aluminum.

It supports "ASAP" which predicts what you might like to stream and pre-records it. Sounds like the best roommate ever.

It will support Netflix, HBO Go, Hulu Plus, and ESPN.

Amazon PrimeMusic offers over a million songs for download and free streaming. Watch out, Apple x Beats. It also has a function called "Delighter," which gives you lyrics information.

The phone will be well-suited for reading, just like the Kindle.

The "Firefly" service recognizes items you want to buy using the four cameras — so just point your phone at stuff you want — and adds them to a list, so you can buy them later. It recognizes over 100 million items. It also acts like Shazam and identifies songs, giving you the option to buy them as well (this phone is heavily geared toward mobile commerce). It can also recognize paintings and give you the Wikipedia info on them (that'll come in handy like... once). It is kind of insane how many things Amazon has come out with this year to make buying things quicker. It's almost as if they stood to benefit from it or someth... Oh. Never mind.